Britain is still sharply divided along economic and social lines, according to new national statistics on educational achievement.

The constituency with the greatest number of well-educated people, Kensington and Chelsea, is home to society's richest elite, while the area with the least well-educated, Walsall North, has considerable social deprivation.

'It would be a mistake to read these statistics as implying that Kensington and Chelsea is home to the most clever people or that the opposite is true of constituencies at the bottom of the table,' said Matilda Gosling, of the National Skills Forum, which commissioned the research.

'People living in some areas have all sorts of advantages over their less privileged neighbours, such as good schools and the assumption of high aspirations,' she added. 'Behind the headline statistics lies a more serious message about differing levels of opportunity across the country.'

The research follows a warning by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the Smith Institute and the Institute for Public Policy Research's Centre for Cities report last week that the new prosperity of leading regional cities is fuelling the creation of a two-tier economy across Britain.

'A new breed of super-cities such as Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle are increasingly dominating their regions, casting off their old industrial heritage by developing new centres for innovation and creativity,' said Chris Brown, of the RICS.

'This has generated prosperity for those equipped to take advantage of these new opportunities, but there is evidence this prosperity is not enjoyed across the whole of a city and even less so across a whole region.'

Instead, said Brown, Britain still has large sections of people with low-level skills, who are effectively excluded from participating in the new breed of businesses the super-cities are attracting.

'Unless more emphasis is placed upon driving up the skills base, we face a real danger of developing successful urban centres at the expense of wider social division.'